I recently organised a holiday to Brittany for my family of five including my husband and my 3 children. It was nearly my daughter's ninth birthday and we'd been discussing the possibilities of everyone going to Euro Disney in Paris. As I started looking into organising this, I realised that the last thing I could face, during a week off work, in the school half term, was to take 2 toddlers and one 9 year old, to something as hectic as Euro Disney. Instead I thought a trip to a private villa with its own private swimming pool might be just the ticket and went about organising that instead. When organising a trip abroad for 5, there is quite a lot to remember. Here is my checklist of essentials for anyone travelling with a young family.

Passports! This is the first essential to tick off your list, long before actually booking their holiday. Adult passports are usually quite easy to update if they are close to the expiry date. One thing to be wary of is that some countries immigration policies require the passport to be valid for more than 6 months, others require it to be valid for at least 3 months. Fortunately France simply requires that the passport is valid, as my own passport was due to expire within 6 months and I did not realise might have been a potential problem until I was sitting at the ferry port. I digress. Children's first passports can be a bit daunting for two reasons. The first reason I dread getting passports for toddlers, is the photo. Young babies no longer have to be awake in their passport photos, however two year olds are a different matter. They are required to have a non-smiling, headshot. If you are struggling with this one, maybe it will reassure you that I took over 40 photos of my son with my digital camera, before I got one that was in focus, without smiling and without red eye. I opted for taking a photo myself with a plain background and then uploading it to a printing site. They printed out passport photos and sent them back to me by return of post. The other reason that children's passports are a complete pain is finding a suitably qualified friend, who you have known for more than 2 years, who also knows what your children look like and who you can get in touch with easily to sign the back of the photos to validate they are who you say you are.

European Health Insurance – formerly known as the E111 form – ensure that you apply for this in good time for your holiday. You can do this easily online as long as know either your NHS number of your NI number.

Ferry – I discovered that some lines are half the price of other lines. I started my search by trying to go from the nearest ferry ports on both sides of the channel, but quickly found that they were not sailing at suitable times so I widened my search and found that the only ferry that was sailing at a time that was suitable for a car load of young children, was also half the price of the 2 major lines.

Accommodation – Clearly the priority and where most people star – is to find the actual place you want to go and book it for the period you want to go!

Cars – Ensure you create the ferry booking with the correct car details and ensure your car is serviced, taxed and road worthy. Pack your car insurance documents, vehicle log book and driver's license. In France it is a requirement to have a reflective safety jacket or vest in your car too so that you can be seen if you break down. A red safety triangle is also useful for similar reasons.

After you have sorted out these bits, remember to consider holiday insurance, Euros, learning some French and of course, your swimming costumes (ok – and all the rest of your luggage – but definitely the swimming costumes). A valuable, parting tip is to try to ensure you have some spare Euros for the toll roads and toll bridges. Brittany roads are toll free, but if you are traveling any distance across the rest of France, you will inevitably require some euros to use the roads and the queues with automated buckets that take loose coins are much shorter than the queues with human operators that take notes and give change.